As organizations rely more and more on electronic messages, such as email, to facilitate communication between employees and other business associates, an address book containing all the email addresses of employees and business associates of an organization has become a critical tool. Users consult the address book to determine the location, telephone number, email address, and other important information about the employees or business associates. A commonly utilized approach to the address book design is to display a flat list of “contacts” representing employees and business associates in an organization in alphabetical order by last name. Users search the alphabetical list to locate desired contact information.
However, this can be problematic if the user knows he or she needs to contact someone within a certain department, but is unsure of the name of the person. Additionally, in countries like Japan, employees are more oriented towards working with departments and titles and, thus, prefer information on a departmental rather than individual basis. Furthermore, in countries like Japan, it is considered rude to have a more senior person identified after a less senior person in the recipient line of an electronic message.